Dr John F. Haught (from start)
Religious fundamentalism is literalistic. Scientism is a type of fundamentalism & literalism. Both religious fundamentalism & scientism are saying that their is a 'certainty' or certitude. Scientism says takes nothing on faith - yet it takes faith to embrace scientism. Scientific Naturalism is the view that nature is all that there is. You bound your sense of reality with a type of certitude says Haught.

Dan Dennett (from 4min 55s)
Scientism: I don't know anybody who is guilty of it. Scientism is a strawman used by people who object to science 'poking its nose into places it shouldn't be.' Reductionism / Scientism. Scientists are naturalists - methodological naturalists which is just built into the scientific method. That isn't to say there couldn't be supernatural things but the burden of proof is on the person who wants to invoke them - thats methodological naturalism. We are not going to let any scientist say 'well my experiment depends on a supernatural element and if you don't believe in it then you won't get the experiment. We don't permit that - thats completely out of bounds - thats naturalism. Comparing a fundamental religionist with scientism - I don't recognise that person who is supposed to be into scientism!

Sources of Knowledge: The Scientific Method v Revelation@ 5:00 Galileo saw moons circling Jupiter - the earth rotates the sun - Heliocentricity of Nicolaus Copernicus& Johannes Kepleris right. Heliocentrism is opposed to geocentrism(Earth at centre).Church thought that bible supported geocentrism - convicted Galileo of heresy.
@ 5:34 Who owns knowledge. What makes one source of knowledge more reliable than another? The scientific method uses observations and logic to produce hypotheses and predictions which are tested over and over again comparing it the evidence then refining hypothesis.@ 7: 29 Repeatability, accuracy, rigour and relevance is at the heart of the scientific method - not foolproof but in last 400 years has uncovered fundamentals of our world.@ 8:30 The religious claim to get knowledge through revelation - direct communication from God.

Creationism v Evolution@ 15: 40 Creationism was taught in American schools and Evolution teaching was banned from 1925 (Scopes trial) until 1987 when the highest court in America ruled that creationism was unconstitutional violating separation of church and state - Creationism was banned from the science curriculum.
@ 16:02 for scientists ancient religious texts are not sources of knowledge about the natural world and to treat them as if they are is absurd. There is no room for biblical creationism in modern science.
@ Creationist & Biochemist Michael Behe claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex, could not have evolved and must have designed in its complete form, by an intelligent designer. This idea was refuted by Kenneth Miller - found examples of simpler flagellum which worked.
@ 20:00 in 2006 Dover court trial ruled that teaching Intelligent Design was unconstitutional, unscientific, was a religious theory; banned from biology classes in public schools
@25: 20. The proposition that an intelligent designer could have created life was not scientific.

The Sensed Presence - why our brains are god receptors
@35:00 Using the controversial 'god helmet' Michael Persinger suggests that the 'sensed presence' (ie feeling the presence of something bigger than oneself) could be stimulated by activating the right hemisphere temporal lobe. However the helmet could not give a religious experience to Richard Dawkins!
@39:00 in meditation blood flow (red) in the parietal lobes reduces - our sense of time and place is reduced with a loss of sense of self. People who meditate and pray have same brain chemistry effects.

During meditation...

blood flowing to parietal lobes is reduced

How did our Universe start?
@44:00 god is being pushed into smaller and smaller crevices.
@49:00 the Higgs Particle if found at LHC may explain the 75% of the universe is Dark Energy
@51:00 gravity strength is just right. Paul Davies (Goldilocks Enigma) says the universe is a 'put up job'. Some have seen the sheer improbability of our existence as evidence of a higher being but Stephen Hawking disagrees. Their may be an infinite number of (multiple) universes or multiverses. But if multiverses cannot be tested for, is science and religion so different after all? Why does anything exist at all? Why do humans finds ourselves on this Earth? And whats it all for?

Will the idea of God ever go away?
@56:00 Thomas Dixon asks: When scientists have a total understanding of our universe (scientism) will the idea of gods go away? TD says probably not because science can not give something that religions offer - meaning and purpose to our lives. Religion has extreme tenacity (a digression: Richard Dawkins interviewed by Jeremy Paxman about The God Delusion). Whether or not God exists it seems we find it very easy to believe in him, because the brain has evolved to believe in the god hypothesis.

Sunday, 6 November 2011

Science is independent of humanism, atheism and religion says Julian Baggini (Distinguished BHA Supporter) in The Guardian. He says some atheists believe that not only is science 'on their side', but it is their saviour too. This is scientism - the idea that if science cannot speak, we must remain silent. By contrast, some say that, as science leaves many questions open, in such cases, man is entitled to base his judgements on non-scientific grounds.

Science can threaten secular humanist ideas. For example, humans have been viewed as autonomous, free, rational individuals. However science has shown that human beings are far less autonomous, rational and free than some secular humanists might suppose, says Baggini.

Atheists are naturalists (the universe contains only natural entities and forces). H4S take a naturalistic view, believing that science is a fundamental part of humanism and that science provides the best way to understand the universe.

Can science be applied to problems of human welfare (2002 Amsterdam Declaration), asks Baggini? In Sam Harris's book The Moral Landscape (subtitled "How science can determine human values") Harris talks of science as though it is the source of all the knowledge and wisdom we need to live by. But, says Baggini, science can never tell us what we should value, because when it tells us how things are, we are always left with the question, what ought we to do about it? This is David Humes' famous is-ought argument. So can or should science be directed to humane and ethical ends, as some H4S suggest?

In his RI lecture he presented a vast amount of data showing that human violence has declined over thousands of years. Looking at deaths relative to population he traced falling rates of death in war and by private murder. The showed the second half of the 20th century to be a peaceful period - and the first decade of the 21st century to be even more so. These findings will surprise many and shock some - even humanists sometimes forget how bad the past was - but the evidence, from history and archaeology, is overwhelming.

Steven traces the decline in violence before, say, 1700, to the establishment of states, trade and the rule of law. For the last three centuries he also pointed to literacy, printing, the Enlightenment and the 'decline or domestication of religion' as causes. His data suggests at least one further factor - the sheer destructiveness of modern warfare between major states has made those states avoid such warfare - at least with each other.

This is a profoundly optimistic view. It's not optimistic despite the facts but because of them. It holds that things have got better fairly consistently over a long period and that they can continue to get better.

It also a humanist view - ascribing the improvements to the spread of reason, the rule of law and an expanding circle of compassion. And it shows, as H4S believes, that scientific method is applicable to history, politics and even morality.

Humanists4Science

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About Humanists4Science (Hum4Sci)

Humanists4Science (H4S) Mission "To promote, within the humanist community, the application of the scientific method to issues of concern to broader society."

H4S Vision "A world in which important decisions are made by applying the scientific method to evidence rather than according to superstition."

H4S isfor humanists with an active interest in science.We believe that science is a fundamental part of humanism but also that it should be directed to humane and ethical ends. Science is, in our view, more a method than a body of facts.

H4S take a naturalistic view and believe, like 62% of the UK population, that science, the scientific method & other evidence provides the best way to understand the universe.

Since 2008 H4S members have discussed many Humanist-Science topics in our Yahoo Group.

Jim Al-Khalili (BHA President)

Prof. Jim Al-Khalili - 11TH BHA President - On Scientific Method

'I have a rational unshakeable conviction that our universe is understandable, that mysteries are only mysteries because we have yet to figure out, the almost always logical answers. For me there is simply no room, no need, for a supernatural divine being to fill in the gaps in our understanding. We’ll get there, we’ll fill in those gaps with objective scientific truths: [with] answers that aren't subjective, because of cultural or historical whims or personal biases, but because of empirically testable and reproducible truths. We may not get the full picture, we may never get the full picture, but science allows us to get ever closer.’ Jim Al-Khalili, BHA AGM 2013

"A lot of people say science is just one way of looking at the world, at reality, and poets and musicians and, of course, people of faith, have said there are other ways. I don't buy that. For me there is an objective reality that is there and real. For a theoretical physicist who's trained in thinking about quantum mechanics, which involves the idea that by observing something you alter its nature, you have to have some sort of working definitions of reality"Jim Al-Khalili in New Humanist magazine Mar Apr 2013

Lord Taverne

Dick Taverne

Lord Taverne

Science depends on reason and regard for evidence. For me, the scientific approach lies at the heart of humanism as well as atheism. We all accept that science has made us healthier and wealthier. What has been seldom acknowledged or realised is that since the Enlightenment, which it helped to bring about, science has played an essential part in making us more civilised.

Science is the enemy of autocracy because it replaces claims to truth based on authority with those based on evidence and because it depends on the criticism of established ideas. Scientific knowledge is the enemy of dogma and ideologies and makes us more tolerant because it is tentative and provisional and does not deal in certainties. It is the most effective way of learning about the physical world and therefore erodes superstition, ignorance and prejudice, which have been causes of the denial of human rights throughout history. Science is also the enemy of narrow nationalism and tribalism and, like the arts, is one of the activities in this world that is not motivated by greed.

What can compare, for example, with the recent achievement of the Large Hadron Collider, a venture of collaboration by 10,000 scientists and engineers from 113 countries, free from bureaucratic and political interference? Those people put aside all national, political, religious and cultural differences in pursuit of truth and for the one purpose of exploring and understanding the natural world.

Without the contribution of science, which is, in my view, the rock on which atheism and humanism are built, we would be less inclined to be critical, tolerant and understanding and more prone to prejudice, bigotry and tribalism. We would be a less civilised society.

David Papineau on Materialism

'Our world is a fully material world. We don’t need to go outside Physics to understand the constitution of the Universe. Anything non-material would be epiphenomena and could never have any effect on the material world.' David Papineau (video) on Materialism

Richard Dawkins (BHA Vice-President) on Scientific Method

'Scientific method is a system whereby working assumptions may be falsified by recourse to reason and evidence.' (Photo: Chris Street, 2006)

Peter Atkins (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'The scientific method is the only reliable method of achieving knowledge. It displaces ignorance without destroying wonder.'

'Science can deal with all the serious questions that have troubled mankind for millennia' Peter Atkins

'My own faith, my scientific faith, is that there is nothing that the scientific method cannot illuminate and elucidate." Peter Atkins

Stephen Fry (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Reason is almost akin to superstition, ... reason must be tested, testing is the very basis of science.'

Matt Ridley (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Science is not a catalogue of facts, but a search for new mysteries. Science increases the store of wonder and mystery in the world; it does not erode it.'

Stephen Law (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Empirical science is possibly the only tool ... for understanding the world around us'.

Lewis Wolpert (BHA Vice President) on Scientific Method

'Science is the best way to understand the world, for any set of observations, there is only one correct explanation. Science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology – from medicine to industry.'

Harry Kroto (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'The methods of science are manifestly effective, having made massive humanitarian contributions to society. It is this very effectiveness which the purveyors of mystical philosophies attack, because they recognise in it the chief threat to the belief-based source of their power and financial reward.'